


Sometimes We Break

by constellationqueen



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homesickness, I don't know how to tag that, M/M, Nightmares, Sappy, communication with the lions, it's not really telepathy, oh well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 12:09:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8143499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellationqueen/pseuds/constellationqueen
Summary: Lance misses home and Shiro has nightmares and Keith is still trying to figure out this whole "family" thing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is not anywhere near good but like... I had to. It's been nagging at me for like a week now and I'm sure that this has been done thousands of times, but I had to. I'm not even a little sorry.

Lance always wants to go home, but on nights like tonight, after a successful mission saving countless other families, after watching the rest of the paladins look so… happy… well, Lance felt like he had to take his sadness elsewhere and just wallow in it for a while. The others are asleep. Shiro and Keith had both been snoring softly when Lance had slipped from the room. He’d made it through the celebratory dinner and the hearty goodnights and the smiles, but he can’t fall asleep, not now.

Because he doesn’t know where else to go, Lance finds his way into the bay that houses his lion. “Hey, Blue,” he says softly, though his voice still echoes once or twice before falling silent once more. “No,” he responds to the thoughts in his head, the ideas and images given to him by his lion, “not tonight, buddy. I just…” He just doesn’t want to be alone, but he couldn’t find comfort in his fellow paladins, not when they were so happy and he just… isn’t.

So he climbs up Blue’s paw and seats himself leaning back against the lion’s leg. For a moment he just sits there, staring across the hangar at the white and blue wall, before he pulls out his tablet. At some point, as a surprise, Coran had gathered data out of the aether. Personal data. Lance doesn’t know how and he doesn’t want to know why, but one morning he woke up and found pictures and videos of his family on his tablet, images that he hadn’t seen since the day before Shiro crash-landed and this whole mess with Voltron and saving the galaxy started.

How long had it been now?

Lance winces when he gets an exact date from Blue. “Not helping, buddy,” he mutters, closing his eyes and thumping his head back against Blue’s leg. More than a year. Fourteen months and some change, and that’s just since leaving the academy. Lance hasn’t seen his family in almost three years.

Biting his lip, Lance tips his head forward again and opens up his tablet. He looks through images first. His little sister and her twin brother smile back at him. They would be so much older now. Well, not really. But he can’t picture them any older than this moment, preserved forever on his tablet. He scrolls to the right. Pictures of his parents, his aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, the rest of his siblings. Some of them date back to the beginning of his time at the academy. Most of them are from a data dump a week before Shiro’s crash.

His chest hurts, and his stomach twists. A tear drops and falls onto the tablet screen. He wipes it and the tracks on his cheeks away before he moves on to the videos. Why he keeps watching these, he doesn’t know. He just misses home so much.

 _“Happy birthday!”_ his family calls from the first video. Everyone is there. Lance is the first person in his family to go to the academy, and they liked to brag about it to their neighbors. _“We miss you so much.”_ That’s his mother, taking over the situation while the other family members smile on. _“Hopefully you got out present. It’s, well… I won’t spoil it in case you haven’t got it yet. Classes are going well, I hope? You’ve made friends, yes?”_ There’s a pause, and Lance tries not to focus on the way his father’s smile is joined quickly by happy tears. _“Stay brave, mijo,”_ his mother says. _“We have to go, but te amamos!”_

The video ends, because files were only allowed to be so large, and Lance pauses the cycle as he hugs his knees to his chest and cries. Blue tries to make him feel better with images of rain and puddles and the underwater world they discovered not so long ago, but none of it helps, none of it eases the tight pain in his chest.

“Lance?”

The blue paladin jerks his head up, swiveling around so quickly that he nearly falls off of his lion’s paw. Lance, despite himself, is expecting a family member, or an enemy, and he can’t help the way his heart falls when he finds only Shiro. Startled and ashamed to have been caught crying, Lance roughly wipes off his cheeks and takes a deep breath to settle his racing heart.

Shiro moves forward despite Lance’s lack of reply, and Lance scoots over on the lion’s paw despite the enormous amount of room on either side of him. Shiro smiles softly and settles in next to Lance, who isn’t quite fast enough at hiding his tablet.

“Oh.” Shiro’s voice is soft, and when he meets Lance’s gaze, it’s knowing. “One of those nights?”

“I’m fine,” Lance says. He’s not, he’s not, not even a little bit, but that’s his problem. Allura and Coran and the other paladins, especially Keith and Shiro, don’t need to have Lance’s problems on their shoulders alongside their own. Lance is just homesick. That’s nothing compared to the stuff the others are going through. “Why are you awake? Nightmares again?” His throat is a little sore from crying, so his voice comes out quieter than normal.

Shiro doesn’t comment on it, doesn’t say anything, in fact. He just lifts a shoulder in a shrug and turns to look across the bay at the wall. They’re both silent for a while, Blue still doing his best to make Lance more at ease, the gentle rainstorm turning into a thunderstorm, the lightning reminding him of Keith, the harsh winds reminding him of Shiro. Water, fire, and air. Lance sighs and tips his body just enough to come to rest against Shiro’s side. Shiro shifts almost without thought, and wraps his arm around Lance’s waist.

“I wish they would stop,” the older paladin says suddenly, though the low tilt of his voice is not startling to Lance. “The nightmares,” he clarifies, though Lance knew perfectly well what Shiro was referring to.

“I know,” Lance says, snuggling closer while the storm rages on, the thunder a comforting rumble against his skull. “I wish I could help.”

“I wish I could bring you home,” Shiro counters, thumb brushing along Lance’s side. “And you do help. You and Keith both. More than you know.” Shiro pauses, his grip tightening momentarily around Lance. “Just waking up and being able to see both of you there… that’s enough in itself. You’re so separate from my memories that… I just know it’s real, instantly, even if neither of you wake up.”

Lance knows that Shiro is just saying that last bit to be nice. Keith always wakes up and says something to Shiro, maybe touches his shoulder or something else uncharacteristically gentle, and then they both fall back asleep. Lance has only woken up to Shiro’s nightmares once, and it was because Shiro had been – still locked in his dream – trying to kill him.

“You can’t bring me home,” Lance says, partially to reassure Shiro and partially to convince himself. “I can’t leave. We… we’ve still got so much to do, so many planets to save. I’m not going to prioritize myself over that many people.” Oh, but he wants to. He wants to be selfish and say fuck everything, fuck Voltron, fuck the Galra, and just… go home. “I’m so tired, Shiro.” He doesn’t mean to say it, but he says it anyway.

The storm in his head gets louder, and he’s thankful for it drowning out his thoughts. He just wants to sleep. Too bad he can’t sleep in here.

Shiro’s fingers are gently combing Lance’s hair before the younger paladin speaks again. “Why did you come here? Why not just go back to sleep?”

“You weren’t there,” Shiro says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Keith went out looking for you too. I sent him a message though, so he’ll be waiting for us back in our room.”

Lance knows that that’s his signal to get up, but it just sounds like so much work. The images in his head switch to a bed, specifically… Lance’s bed at home. “Blue…” He knows that his lion is trying to be helpful, but honestly.

Shiro arches an eyebrow as Lance pulls away from him. “What’s she doing?” Shiro asks, his gaze moving all the way up to the blue lion’s head.

“Trying to help,” Lance says, and though he’s sort of bitter about Blue’s choice of images when Lance is so homesick, his tone is gentle. He knows that Blue means well. With a great heaving sigh, Lance pulls away from Shiro and gets to his feet. “Shouldn’t keep Keith waiting,” he says, and slides down from Blue’s paw. Shiro lands beside him a moment later, and Lance sets his hand briefly on his lion’s paw. “I’ll see you later, buddy.”

A full-body shudder of warmth moves through Lance, and he smiles. He supposes that’s as close to a purr as a robot lion can get.

Shiro leads the way from the hangar, and Lance follows a step behind. They don’t say anything as they make their way back through the giant ship to their shared room. The door slides open with a small hiss, and Shiro steps through with Lance on his heels.

Forward momentum is halted when Keith plows into him, gripping his waist in a squeeze that pulls the air from Lance’s lungs. “Don’t _do_ that,” Keith says, words soft since his mouth is so close to Lance’s ear. Tentatively, Lance returns the embrace, his arms moving up to encircle Keith. “Don’t disappear like that. I hate not knowing where you are. Especially after…” After today, yeah, another close call, another near-death experience. Lance is sadly getting used to them. One of these days his luck will run out, but it wasn’t today, and hopefully it won’t be until he can see his family again.

_They probably already think you’re dead._

_No,_ he thinks firmly, but the damage is already done.

Feeling suddenly like he was kicked in the gut, Lance’s grip on Keith tightens until he’s sure it has to hurt, but Keith returns the hug just as fiercely. “Sorry,” Lance murmurs, burying his face in Keith’s neck, trying to remind himself that Keith and Shiro are his family now too, that Pidge and Hunk and Allura and Coran are basically cousins or aunts or uncles. And they’re here, in front of him, and they need him to be present for them.

Keith pulls back and sets his hands on Lance’s shoulders. Shiro is standing just behind Keith and a little to the right. Lance tries his hardest not to look away from them. “It’s alright to miss home, Lance,” Keith says, and Lance suddenly _can’t_ look away from those damn eyes, the color of a thin layer of clouds, where the blue sky is just barely visible through the grey wisps. “I’m sorry. I wish…”

“Don’t,” Lance says, leaning forward to kiss the corner of Keith’s mouth. “There’s been enough wishing tonight. I just want to sleep.”

Something stubborn passes through Keith’s expression, like he knows what Lance is doing in avoiding the subject, but Shiro settles his hand on Keith’s shoulder, and the red paladin lets out a breath of defeat. “Alright,” he says, fisting his hand in Lance’s jacket before using his grip to pull him to bed.

They settle down a bit out of their usual order, with Shiro’s back to the wall and Keith’s back to the room. Lance spoons up against Shiro’s chest, and his hands interlock with Keith’s.

They’re family too.

And though it doesn’t take away from the desperate ache Lance feels at wanting to see his parents and siblings again, it settles him enough to let him fall asleep.


End file.
